getting a handle on …

So, I went with this PUG into Shadowlabs last night. Excellent group, I thought. And still do, actually – everyone did what appeared to be a solid, solid job. I mean, while Blackheart was long, he was easy.

Then we reached Vorpil. Three wipes. Finally, I offered to bow out (and another player just left) so the party leader could bring in two guildies (who are making regular Kara runs).

Which means I don’t know if it was me or something else. On the chance it’s me, I did some SERIOUS review.

For the entire instance, I was number two in damage, though third was less than a percent away. Unexpectedly, my healing was almost 40% of the group’s total heals. Further analysis says a lot was overheal from Vampiric Embrace (Improved) kicking off — 25% of my damage coming back to everyone in the party as healing.

So, I’m doing 90-95% of the mage, and matching (effectively) the group leader/shaman overall. What about THIS fight?

Pull the numbers, and they look the same.

Let me look at the strategy. We tried two, basically. First, we set the mage to killing voidwalkers till the surge begins (about 15% health), at which point the mage switches to the boss and we try to race the heals. Second, the druid-tank kited the boss away from the voidwalkers and we all hammered him. Both times we had him down to under 10% health when the party finally wiped.

What finally brought down the boss – and Murmur – was the addition of two DPS players who did more than we did. (note, I need to ask the team leader what tactic they used with these two. It matters.) Which means I’m not performing up to par. Or rather, I might be ok as long as I’m the worst DPS. Since I’m presently a shadow priest, that’s bad.

In this instance I was doing around 350 DPS sustained. 3 out of every 30 seconds was spent on non-dps spells – VE and VT. Dropping those two spells bumps me up to about 390 at the cost of approximately 88 hps/player and 17.5 mana per second (87.5 mp5) per mana user (Mage, Druid, Shaman, and me in this case.) The rate increase would have put me up to… almost equal the mage. There’s got to be a better way, though, because the VE/VT bonuses make a HUGE difference. And there is.

I’m geared wrong. My head, neck, waist, and one of my rings are HEAL ONLY. And one of my trinkets adds to my crits, which – since most of my damage comes from DoTs and Channelled spells – isn’t the best add. Thus my obvious goal is:

Find and get geared for damage. Shadow by preference, but damage. I think I’ll modify my current quest chain work (for keying) to get gear. One point, though, to which I might return. I could respec for shadowcloth gear, and that would help a LOT. However, if I respec does the belt I’m wearing disappear?

Oh, and the final insult. I’ve DE’d some of the quest items I could be using. My healing was better. sigh.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.